Elianne (27 page)

Given Bobbo’s reports, he had anticipated a sexual awakening, and he was not disappointed: she served him with her mouth and her body in ways he had never envisaged let alone experienced. But it was her final pleasure in the act that took him completely by surprise. When she sensed he was nearing his climax, she gave herself up to her own release with a spontaneity, unrestrained and abandoned, that excited him beyond measure.

When it was over, she recovered herself remarkably quickly and, as he lay on the pallet still gasping for breath, she rose to wash herself. He watched, somewhat dazed, as she crossed to the bucket of fresh water that sat by the back door of the hut. He’d expected the sexual ministrations of an expert certainly, but the sheer uninhibited pleasure? Did other women behave like that? Had it been an act on her part, had she been faking her pleasure? She couldn’t have surely. It hadn’t felt that way to him.

She returned with the wet rag and bathed his penis, chatting happily as she did so.

‘Nice, yes?’ She smiled. ‘Good for me too.’ Yen preferred to orgasm whenever possible, it made work so much more pleasurable, and the soldiers always liked it. ‘You have good time?’

‘Yes,’ she might have been asking if he’d enjoyed a meal. ‘Very good, thank you.’

‘I think you virgin,’ she said and gave a light laugh, ‘but you not virgin, hey?’

‘No not virgin. But not very experienced,’ he admitted wryly.

‘No, I think that too.’ She rose and returned the rag to the bucket. ‘That why I bring you here,’ she said as she started to dress, ‘special place.’

He hurriedly stood and also started to dress. ‘You don’t bring many men here?’

‘Only nice soldier,’ she said. Yen very much preferred the privacy of auntie’s place to Mai and Kim’s, but when a soldier was overly drunk or aggressive she needed the back-up on offer at the girls’ rooms. There was a practical aspect too that further complicated things. ‘Cheaper here,’ she said, ‘pay Auntie one dollar, pay Mai and Kim half money, but take more time bring soldier here from town, so . . .’ She shrugged. The financial issue was indeed a complex one. ‘Still, I like better here.’

‘I’m glad I’m one of the nice soldiers,’ he said. He wasn’t sure why or how he qualified, but the thought somehow pleased him.

‘Oh yes, you very nice. You very, very nice soldier.’ She smiled as if he was something special, and Neil’s heart seemed to foolishly skip a beat. ‘You first
uc dai loi
I bring here,’ she said. ‘Other nice soldier come here all American.’

Uc dai loi
, literally meaning people from the south, was the local term applied to Australian soldiers, and Neil supposed he should be complimented that he was the first Australian she’d brought to auntie’s place, but he felt vaguely disappointed.

‘We go now,’ she said.

‘Yen.’ He halted her at the door and she looked up at him questioningly. ‘Would it be all right,’ he said feeling extraordinarily gauche but unable to resist asking, ‘I mean would you mind awfully if I kissed you?’ He wondered if it was true what they said, that prostitutes didn’t kiss – he had no idea, having never been with a prostitute. He only knew that he desperately wanted to kiss her.

She gave the matter a moment’s consideration. ‘OK,’ she said, and closing her eyes she leant her head back, lips dutifully pursed.

He cupped her face in his hands and bending down gently kissed her. ‘Thank you,’ he said as they parted.

His tenderness impressed her. ‘You are gentleman,’ she said.

‘Neil.’ He wasn’t sure if she remembered his name. ‘My name’s Neil,’ he said.

‘Yes. You are gentleman, Neil.’

*

Over the next several weeks, every single day’s leave Neil could scrounge saw a trip to auntie’s place. He discovered a great deal about Nguyen Thi Yen. As the oldest of three sisters and with no brother in the family, she had taken it upon herself to be the principal breadwinner. Each morning she and her sisters would wheel the big wooden barrow the two miles from their village into the marketplace, stopping off regularly at their widowed auntie’s hut on the outskirts of town to collect the raffia craftwork she made for sale.

Once in town, Yen would change into one of the pretty dresses she kept at Kim and Mai’s and while she worked the streets with her friends, her sisters would sell the vegetables their father grew, together with the sandals and mats and bags woven by their auntie. At dusk, Yen would change again into her work clothes and the three girls would trundle the barrow back to their village.

Yen’s auntie and sisters knew of her double life, but apparently her parents did not. Or so Yen said. Neil found it odd they shouldn’t question the radical improvement in their market sales; more probable, he thought, that they suspected the truth, but would not admit it even to themselves. He never questioned Yen on the subject, however, as she clearly wished to believe in her parents’ ignorance.

The more he grew to know her, the more Neil came to realise that he genuinely loved Yen. At first he’d tried to convince himself that his obsession with her was due to no more than a newly awakened lust. Bobbo had been quick to warn him of such a danger.

‘Geez, mate, you’re mad to get involved with the first hooker you sleep with,’ Bobbo had said, not unreasonably. ‘Try another one. They’re as sexy as all get out, the whole lot of them.’

But Neil didn’t want to ‘try another one’, and before long he was forced to admit the fact that he was in love. That he’d quite possibly been in love from the first day he’d met her.

‘I want to look after you, Yen,’ he said one afternoon. They’d had sex and she was bathing him in her ritual manner. How many other cocks does she bathe like this? he wondered as he watched her efficient ministrations. He was plagued by such images lately and had been for some time. Unrealistic though he knew he was being, he loathed the thought of her with other men.

He took the cloth from her and eased her down beside him on the pallet, propping on his elbow to talk to her. ‘I don’t know what you earn and I’m sure I couldn’t match it, but I could help you support your family. I could do that if you would let me.’

‘You want look after me?’ No one had ever looked after Yen before. As the oldest in a family of three girls, she had always been the one to do the looking after. No soldier had ever treated her like Neil did either. Neil treated her in an honourable way, with respect. And now he wanted to look after her? She was overwhelmed.

Neil’s love was possibly predictable, perhaps even inevitable, but the far less predictable had happened. Yen too was in love, in her own way, a way that would prove fiercely loyal.

Everything changed from that moment on. As evidence of her fidelity, Yen gave her pretty dresses to Mai and Kim, proof of the fact that she had no wish to attract the attention of other men. She worked in her peasant garb at the market alongside her sisters, and when Neil was granted leave they spent the day together.

‘You want I keep pretty dress just for you?’ she asked the next time they went to auntie’s place.

‘I like you exactly as you are,’ he said. When he’d arrived at the marketplace to find her in her work clothes he’d been deeply touched, realising in an instant the statement she was making. ‘You are beautiful, Yen, in whatever you wear.’

It had seemed a more or less routine patrol – at least that’s what the men had first thought. For some time the Australians had been aware through radio intercepts and sightings that a sizeable enemy strength was operating not far from Nui Dat, but patrols sent out in search of the Viet Cong had not encountered the force. Then a barrage of enemy mortar was fired upon the base, and in the mid-afternoon of 18 August, D Company, 6RAR was sent on patrol into the rubber plantation of Long Tan to discover where the shells had been fired from.

At quarter past three, 11 Platoon encountered a small group of Viet Cong and a skirmish ensued, leaving one enemy dead and the others fleeing. Clearly the enemy was in the area, but as the Australians continued their patrol they still believed themselves the numerically superior force. They were soon to learn otherwise. 11 Platoon was unaware it had encountered the forward troops of a full-force regiment.

Shortly after four o’clock, the men of D Company, 6RAR were met by the main body of the Viet Cong 275th Regiment.

The battle conditions were horrendous. Heavy monsoon rain broke out, reducing visibility to barely fifty yards and breathing became difficult as men literally sucked in water. All about them, the ground turned to a boggy mess, but 10 and 11 Platoons fought valiantly on, still ignorant of the full force they had encountered.

The advancing battalions of Viet Cong attacked with mortars, rifle and machine-gun fire in an attempt to encircle and destroy the Australians. As assault followed assault it became evident that the enemy force was far stronger than had at first been envisaged and 12 Platoon was ordered through from the rear to support 11 Platoon, which was by now all but surrounded.

Neil and Bobbo fought side by side. Blinded by rain and dragged down by mud, the men of 12 Platoon faced a barrage from all directions, forcing a path through the fire to defend their comrades. The noise was horrific. The explosion of enemy mortars joined the boom of heavy artillery support that was now being fired from Nui Dat, several miles to the west, and all about was the constant
rat-tat
of machine guns, the whistle of bullets and the unnerving bugle calls of the Viet Cong.

Despite the cacophony, Neil heard the murderous screams begin nearby. So did Bobbo. Through the blanket of rain they saw them appear from out of the rubber trees barely twenty yards away: three Viet Cong charging directly at them, firing at random and screaming like madmen.

The Australians raised their rifles and fired. Neil’s bullet found its mark. A headshot. One of the Viet Cong dropped instantly and Neil turned his sights on the next.

Rattled by the surrounding mayhem, Bobbo’s aim had been erratic and wildly off target. He fired again frantically. The soldiers were by now virtually upon them. His second bullet proved successful, as did Neil’s, and the two Viet Cong all but collided with them as they fell, each shot through the chest. But Bobbo had paid a price for his inaccuracy. He lay on the ground beside the enemy soldiers, also felled by a shot to the chest.

Neil halted momentarily, presuming his friend dead. The Viet Cong certainly appeared to be. But then he saw that Bobbo was not dead. His mate’s eyes were alive, fearful and bewildered, but signalling him nonetheless. Go on, Bobbo was saying, go on. Neil knew there was no alternative. Others of 12 Platoon were surging ahead through the chaos. He had no way of carrying him to safety. There was no safety zone anyway.

‘Hang in there, mate,’ he said, ‘you’ll be right. They’ll come and get you later.’

He left his friend and ploughed on through the mud and the rain and the bullets. He didn’t believe for one moment they’d come and get Bobbo. How could the wounded be evacuated from this bedlam? If anyone was to get Bobbo it would be the Viet Cong. But Bobbo would probably be dead by then. At least Neil hoped so.

By six o’clock, the Australian troops had successfully manoeuvred themselves into an all-round defensive position, but it was now nearly two hours since the battle had begun and still the enemy kept up its assault, their numbers seemingly inexhaustible. They came in lines of twenty or more, wave after wave of them, deathly black shapes hurtling out of the rubber trees in relentless response to the awful call of their bugles. No sooner had one line succumbed to the barrage of Australian artillery and gunfire than another line rose up from behind the mangled bodies of the fallen like spectres, indestructible and never-ending.

To the beleaguered men of D Company 6RAR the outcome appeared inevitable. Indeed they would already have been wiped out had the two RAAF Hueys not managed to deliver them their sorely needed ammunition. Despite horrendous conditions, the aerial drop had been made miraculously on target, the pilots led in by the red smoke from the flares that had been released. D Company had had a new lease of life there for a while, but they now knew to a man they couldn’t go on much longer.

Then at seven, as darkness descended and all seemed lost, the relief force appeared from out of the gloom. 6RAR’s A Company arrived mounted in the armoured personnel carriers of 1st APC Squadron and as they thundered through the plantation the enemy forces melted away into the gathering night. The Battle of Long Tan was finally over.

The facts were revealed during the days that followed. D Company, 6RAR, a force of one hundred and eight, had encountered a full regimental strength of approximately two and a half thousand Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Regular Army, engaging them in battle for close on three hours. Eighteen Australians had been killed and twenty-four wounded. Enemy casualties were far more difficult to ascertain. Two hundred and forty-five bodies were found in the battle area, but it was estimated up to a further three hundred and fifty dead had been collected during the night, together with an unknown number buried along the evacuation route. The true statistics would never be known.

The Battle of Long Tan proved a decisive victory for the Australians. It also proved a major local setback for the Viet Cong, forestalling any imminent action against Nui Dat and challenging their previous domination of Phuoc Tuy Province.

‘You’ll be off home soon, mate, something to look forward to, eh?’

Neil visited Bobbo at the base hospital just before he was shipped back to Australia. Bobbo hadn’t died after all. The bullet had hit him high in the chest, smashing through his upper ribs and out his left shoulder blade: a nasty wound, but resulting in no damage to vital organs.

‘Yeah, aren’t I the lucky one.’ Bobbo gave a wink that looked somehow odd, somehow lacking his customary larrikin flair. ‘I’ll miss the girls though.’

Neil pretended a bit of a laugh, knowing the act was sheer bravado.

‘Just as well you’re a better shot than me, mate.’ Keeping up the pretence, Bobbo chatted away, trying to cover his twitchiness. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all otherwise, and that’s a fact.’